As I've only been living in the UK for two years, I suppose my views on certain TV channels and organizations may be a bit different. For example, up until yesterday, I always thought that when I turned on the BBC to watch a documentary, that I would be watching something that unbiased, if not liberal. (Stop laughing at me.) However, after watching Born Suvivors: Kizzy, Mum at 14 I found myself astonished at how blatantly anti-abortion, pro-Catholicism, anti-sex education, and anti-sex the program was.
This episode of Born Survivors initially comes across as a documentary about a teenage mother who is trying to "get her baby's teenage father to acknowledge his child". They start the program focusing on the absent father, and then slowly start showing home footage Kizzy's family starting filming as a way of showing other teenagers what will "happen" to you if you have "underage sex". It was the emphasis on "underage" that started to really bother me. Shouldn't they be saying "unprotected"?
Sadly, the emphasis on "underage" sex being the cause for so many teenage pregnancies in Kizzy's impoverished town wasn't the most disturbing part of the documentary. Slowly but surely, we start finding out things about Kizzy's family that makes it suddenly very clear that this is not a documentary about teenage mums, but about anti-abortionists, religion and how sex education promotes "underage" sex.
Firstly, we find out that Kizzy's family did not want her to have an abortion, despite being 13 at the time of conception, because Kizzy's older sister was a victim of "cot death" and died at only 3 months old. The BBC commentator then goes on to defend Kizzy's family's feelings on abortion by adding: "Life is too precious." You're right, BBC! Life is precious! How could anyone ever get a horrid abortion when babies people actually want are dying?!
However, what bothered me most was that the next scene after an emotional ceremony at the grave of Kizzy's passed older sister, Kizzy's father took her and her infant son to what the BBC commentator described as being a "special rally"; otherwise known as an anti-abortion rally. Yup! AN ANTI-ABORTION RALLY. We are then treated to an extra special explanation from Kizzy's father about how an abortion would have affected him, and how it would have made him feel, and that's why Kizzy wasn't given that option.
Even worse, as Kizzy is clearly influenced by her religious father, they have a great voice over of Kizzy condemning her school's sex education program. She says that "the school kind of promotes it", the "it" being sex. She also says that, "The message that I get from it is that 'you can come to us if you get pregnant and we'll sort an abortion out'." George W Bush would love this girl.
Cut to the next scene with her father, Kevin Neal, complaining that Tic Tac (her school's sex ed program) "undermines" what parents tell their children. He explains that he believes in abstinence, and that children should wait until 16 to have sex because "our religions doesn't allow it" and goes on to expresses his disgust with teachers and school workers giving away condoms to their students by calling it "unethical".
Yes, Mr.Neal. It's the school's fault that your 13-year-old daughter went and had unprotected sex and got knocked up. Not yours or your wife's fault. Just the schools. Never mind the fact that even if the school did hand your daughter a condom and told her to go have sex, she obviously didn't take their advice and clearly chose to not use the damn condom.
I won't bore you with all the other disgusting comments made about sex education, or the fact that Kizzy chose to have her son baptized. Or that she then chose to join the Catholic church because they were the only ones who supported her during her pregnancy. (And probably the old ladies who organized the "special" anti-abortion rally.)
However, I would like to fully express my disappointment and frustration at the BBC for making such a horribly biased "documentary". The title of the series is "Born Survivors", though I have to wonder what the point of the story was. To use pathetic scare tactics like describing how many times Kizzy's vaginal tissue had to be cut (3) and how many stitches she had to have (80) to get kids under 16 to not have sex? To further send the message that sex education doesn't work, and only promotes "underage", unprotected and misinformed sex? Or was it to "prove" that abortion is not only shameful, but murder, and that religion, the ways of the Catholic Church and choosing to not have abortions are the only just options for women?
I won't be watching Born Survivors or BBC Three again any time soon.
Cate Sevilla is a freelance writer in London and regular contributor to Dollymix.
